Picture: Operation Migration with whooping cranes

Picture: Operation Migration with whooping cranes

Tom Sistak, The Associated Press

Operation Migration Pilot Brooke Pennypacker leads whooping cranes as they leave a field near Somonauk, Ill., at sunrise, Thursday morning, Oct. 27, 2005. Operation Migration has worked since the late 1990s to reintroduce migratory whooping cranes to easter North America, using ultralight aircraft to guide a new flock of cranes each fall from the Necedah Wildlife refuge in Wisconsin to Florida's Gulf Coast.

Operation Migration Pilot Brooke Pennypacker leads whooping cranes as they leave a field near Somonauk, Ill., at sunrise, Thursday morning, Oct. 27, 2005. Operation Migration has worked since the late 1990s to reintroduce migratory whooping cranes to easter North America, using ultralight aircraft to guide a new flock of cranes each fall from the Necedah Wildlife refuge in Wisconsin to Florida's Gulf Coast. (Tom Sistak, The Associated Press)

Operation Migration Pilot Brooke Pennypacker leads whooping cranes as they leave a field near Somonauk, Ill., at sunrise, Thursday morning, Oct. 27, 2005. Operation Migration has worked since the late 1990s to reintroduce migratory whooping cranes to easter North America, using ultralight aircraft to guide a new flock of cranes each fall from the Necedah Wildlife refuge in Wisconsin to Florida's Gulf Coast.